Our Staff Picks: TV Shows to Watch the Week of April 3, 2017

Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV.

Each week, Variety’s TV team combs through the week’s TV schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch it. This week, “Archer” returns on a new network, while Louis C.K. releases a new Netflix comedy special. Also, “Prison Break” returns to the air after almost eight years.

“Louis C.K.: 2017,” Netflix, Tuesday

The venerable comedian is back with an all-new one hour special. “2017,” as it is simply called, was filmed in Washington D.C. and is the first of two new specials C.K. will launch on Netflix. He previouosly released his 2011 special “Live from the Beacon Theater” exclusively on his own website for $5, and several of his other specials have been available on Netflix for years. He joins a growing list of comedians who have scored lucrative deals with the streaming service, with the most recent being Dave Chappelle, who debuted two new specials earlier this month with a third on the way.

Prison Break, Fox, Tuesday, 9 p.m.

The Fox thriller series returns after almost eight years. In this follow-up, Lincoln discovers that his brother, Michael, is still alive and is stuck in a Yemen prison. All your favorite characters will return, including T-Bag, C-Note, and Dr. Sara Tancredi. This is the latest Fox series to get the revival treatment, with 24: Legacy launching earlier this year and a new installment of “The X-Files” airing last year.

Archer, FXX, Wednesday 10 p.m.

Your favorite alcoholic super-spy returns for an eighth season, though he and the rest of the team are shifting from FX to FXX this time. In the new season, Archer finds himself in 1947 Los Angeles, working as a hard-boiled private eye on the hunt for his partner’s killer. This is not the first time series creator Adam Reed has toyed with the setting and format of the show, with Season 5 of the series being retitled “Archer Vice,” following the team as they try to unload a literal ton of cocaine.

Brockmire, IFC, Wednesday, 10 p.m. (CRITICS’ PICK)

Azaria plays a plaid-blazer wearing baseball announcer named Jim Brockmire, whose biggest claim to fame is an on-air meltdown he had in 2007, hours after discovering his wife in a compromising position. The show begins after 10 years of exile abroad, when he returns stateside only to discover that his greatest disgrace has become one of the first viral memes. In the intervening decade, Brockmire’s become (even more of) a drunk and an a–hole, charming and toxic, willing to do pretty much anything to keep himself in plaid sports coats and top shelf liquor. It’s this shameless desperation that leads to the nonspecific American town named Morristown, somewhere that time and economic progress appears to have forgotten. Morristown is so defined by corporations’ rapacious efforts to glean shale oil from its bedrock that their minor league baseball team is called the Frackers. The team’s owner, Jules (Amanda Peet), has a vision for what a revitalized baseball team could do for her overlooked and ignored hometown. “Brockmire” is the story of how Brockmire the man begins to try to make peace with himself; it’s one part sports inspiration story, another part Lifetime movie about finding love in a small town, but mostly it’s an assured, character-driven comedy, with a kind of raw humor that’s less vulgar than it is painfully intimate. Despite the inherent tragedies of being a rust-belt minor-league alcoholic baseball announcer, “Brockmire” is quite a lot of fun to watch. (Read the full review here)

The Get Down, Netflix, Friday

The Bronx are alive with the sound of music in part two of Baz Luhrmann’s first TV series, set within the burgeoning New York hip hop scene of 1978. Following the events of part one, Books and Shaolin Fantastic have formed a new group called The Get Down Brothers, while Mylene has become the disco sensation she always wanted to be. But success proves to be a double-edged sword, and those who were once friends find themselves at odds amidst the birth of a new musical genre.

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